Word: hamlet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...magic of Beale’s performance cannot be captured in newspaper reviews or theatrical awards. In fact, it is with great uncertainty that I even try to represent his great achievement in words. Reviewing this Hamlet is not a matter of reviewing a character or even an actor. The experience is instead like trying to review an actual human being who, after more than 300 years of hiding behind a colossal myth, has quietly and unassumingly stepped out to tell his story: Hamlet the man—not the character, the icon or the gimmick. The glory of Beale?...
...suddenly playing roles rather than living in them. There are lines to be said, marks to be hit and emotions to be conveyed. There is a sense of theatrical intention in the production that detracts from its original, unassuming sensibility. The world, it seems, has worn on this Hamlet and filled it with tensions...
Admittedly, not all of these problems are new and some of them seem legitimately unavoidable. Certain lines of Shakespeare’s are dead and gone forever. According to Harold Bloom, there were lines from the Ur-Hamlet, the play (probably by Thomas Kyd) on which Shakespeare’s Hamlet was most immediately based, which remained a source of mockery for years in the world of Elizabethan theatrics due to their utter ridiculousness. (The ghosts overemphatic and rather simple cry of “Hamlet, revenge!” was among the most common targets.) Now, what Shakespeare undid...
...Horatio does an impeccable job instilling some signs of life, all be they muted, in what may be the flattest character ever written. But for the most part all parties involved, from Claudius to Laertes, show a distinct lack of subtlety or careful characterization. In those instances where Hamlet is absent from the stage for an extended period of time, the production can become downright painful to watch...
...Simon Russell Beale’s glorious performance. He has grown uneven with the various changes that have happened around him, but even at his worst he is a sight to behold. Most performers have it written into their contracts that they do no more than one production of Hamlet in a day. More would be too draining, both emotionally and physically. And yet, Beale has been playing the Dane for nearly a year now. For some such a run might be no trouble at all. But for a performer who so completely slides inside of a character as abused...